A Dead Man Not My Own

I wanted to drive up and down the empty streets and watch the yellow lights blink on and off and listen to Bob Dylan asking that his grave be kept clean. I wanted to cry.

I came home instead.

The solstice party was amazing. A good balance of ritual with free time.

I wrote my regrets on a piece of rice paper. I threw rice into the river. I burnt my regrets on a log. I painted what I envisioned for myself in the coming year. I can’t tell if it’s part Virgin of Guadalupe, part clitoral hood, or what. I wanted it to mean that I would try to be more sacred. Maybe it just means I’m going to masturbate more. I like it, though. It looks like a mystery.

I read fortunes. One after another after another, all met with women giving me weird looks and saying how right I was. That, in itself, would have been draining. I am drained just from that. Each person has a life that is scary. The stakes are always so high and also, at the same time, so ordinary.

I read for a woman whose brother had killed himself. I read for him. I don’t know that I have ever done that before. It was so hard. Her grief was so deep and his grief…

I can’t tell you that I’ve ever felt anything like that–his joy at being free and experiencing new things and his devastating guilt and dispair over the pain he’d caused his family. Even telling you about the memory of it is rolling the tears right down my face.

I’m not a medium, not normally. I’m not even sure that our souls survive death. I mean, I desperately want to believe, but I’m just not sure. But he was there, as real as anything I have ever felt, and when he left, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I felt buzzed and drained. I feel empty and less cramped.

I feel like I’ve pulled a truck.

I feel a little afraid.

I feel deeply honored.